As with any turn of the calendar, it wouldn’t be official without creating some goals first. It’s that time of the year where the gyms all suck to go to and you have to listen to every coworker, family member, and friend talk about their overly ambitious goal in which they will likely give up on in a month. In all seriousness, writing goals is a skill and it is a practice often done by very successful people. The key is writing them down and keeping them SMART. I can hear my physical therapy professors cheering after that comment. SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely The key to…
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The Next Warren Buffett
As I mentioned, I began investing soon after I started my first job as a physical therapist. I had started a Roth IRA with TD Ameritrade for no particular reason other than I had heard of it before. I decided I would start investing $500 dollars per pay check or roughly $1000 per month with the goal to have it maxed out by the end of 2017. Again, I had only just started working in late may, so I felt this was a reasonable goal. At the time of writing this in 2019 the current max on an IRA account is $6,000 per year if you are under 50 and…
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Umm Dad… What’s 401k???
Sometime shortly after I began working in May of 2017, I remember reading through my employer’s benefits packet at my job (I suggest doing this before starting a job, but I was young and dumb). I started seeing abbreviations like 401k, IRA, and HSA, with headlines beneath saying things like “invest in your future”, or “plan for your retirement now”. Embarrassingly, these were all phrases or acronyms that I had seen before but in reality knew nothing about. I remember reading through it and turning to my dad to ask him what a 401k was… I could name you every muscle in the body with it’s origin, insertion, and action.…
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The Accumulation Phase
Wealth building or investing can often be broken down into 3 phases: accumulation, consolidation, and spending. The accumulation phase is the phase in which an investor begins to build or acquire assets to grow his or her net worth. For most people this occurs at a young age and it allows people to be much more tolerant to a higher risk both with their investments and career. As it is with many professions with additional schooling, the academic path to physical therapy school is no different. After seven long years, I was finally released into the world with the ability to make a livable income at the ripe age of…
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My Financial Journey-Part 2
We created an ad in our local newspaper advertising deck staining and labor work. Our friends laughed, but to theirs and our surprise, someone called about staining their deck. They asked for an estimate. So we said sure, and we drove to their house the next day to estimate the price. We pull up and two 19 year old kids get out of the car. We meet the customers and walk around back to see their deck. They ask what it would cost and without making a single measurement or looking at anything really. I blurt out “$300”. Clearly they were very happy with this price as they immediately said…
